oss-sec mailing list archives
Re: can we talk about secure time?
From: Dave Horsfall <dave () horsfall org>
Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2014 05:18:20 +1100 (EST)
On Mon, 22 Dec 2014, Hanno Böck wrote:
I perfectly understand that some people need more accuracy than tlsdate can give. However it's probably rare, right? I don't see any reason why average consumer hardware (Desktop, smartphone etc.) would have any problem with the 1-2 sec max inaccuracy of tlsdate.
Speaking as one who had to feed and water an OpenLDAP system that was replicating all over the world, I really cared whether *this* event happened before or after *that* event, but yeah, most users don't need to do that. You haven't lived until you've debugged a replication problem; "Boss, are both these systems running NTP?" "Yes, Dave." "Right, in that case, I've found another obscure bug in OpenLDAP." When you've got more than one person updating the same object at around the same time, it was really helpful, in an LDAP sense, to know the precise order of events, as the whole concept of replication depends upon it. I suspect that we humans, the geekier we become, the more precise are our perceived needs; just listen to any time announcement over the telephone: "At the third stroke, it will be six o'clock precisely" (with the precise bit happening at the start of the third beep, and I was fanatic over that). -- Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) "Bliss is a MacBook with a FreeBSD server." http://www.horsfall.org/spam.html (and check the home page whilst you're there)
Current thread:
- Re: can we talk about secure time?, (continued)
- Re: can we talk about secure time? Florian Weimer (Dec 21)
- Re: can we talk about secure time? Daniel Micay (Dec 21)
- Re: can we talk about secure time? Dave Horsfall (Dec 21)
- leap seconds and security [was: Re: can we talk about secure time?] Daniel Kahn Gillmor (Dec 21)
- Re: can we talk about secure time? Florian Weimer (Dec 21)
- Re: can we talk about secure time? Hanno Böck (Dec 21)
- Re: can we talk about secure time? Kurt Seifried (Dec 21)
- Re: can we talk about secure time? Hanno Böck (Dec 21)
- Re: can we talk about secure time? Walter Parker (Dec 21)
- Re: can we talk about secure time? John Haxby (Dec 22)
- Re: can we talk about secure time? Dave Horsfall (Dec 22)
- Re: can we talk about secure time? Richard Johnson (Dec 25)
- Re: can we talk about secure time? Florian Weimer (Dec 21)